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Leadership in Music
I was really impressed by the concert of a West African musician whom I went to see recently, Baaba Maal. It was because of the style, say even leadership style, how he managed the concert and his band.
After the first song which was very calm and quite, only himself singing accompanied by his guitar, he gave a short speech to the audience in which he layed out his musical philosophy: sharing the music, sharing the joy, celebrating together is important. An entirely communitarian approach which was prooven within the following one and a half hours, as well as his participative and democratic leadership style.
After more vibrant music had come up the Senegalese style dancers amongst the public went each on stage to give their brief performance. The audience was invited to come to stage and Baaba himself went down from the stage through the audience with one of his drum players. It was not only him holding the forefront, again and again he put every single one of his musicians to the forefront to perform their solos, to honor them and have them honored by the audience, including the old blind man, the background singer. He spent nearly entire songs near the drums at the back of the stage. It looked like he took very serious himself what he was saying, sharing the spotlight, performing the music together!
I never realized a famous musician on stage who was seeking to stand less in the spotlight than him! He came across like a calm, wise person who is a good, maybe natural leader. Impressive!
Posted at
01:07PM Nov 18, 2009
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Leadership Patterns
I want to follow-up on my last post about patterns in company culture connecting these to different Leadership styles. Hermann Küster did a deep dive into the work of Rooke/Torbert who published their research “Organizational Transformation as a Function of CEOs' Developmental Stage” already in 1998. They drew a first picture of six managerial styles and an associated developmental frame that culminated in the 2005 Harvard Business Review publication of “Seven Transformations of Leadership”. Hermann connected these to the concept of the Spiral Dynamic evolution steps as outlined before.
Similar to the approach on an organizational level this framework can be used to analyze where a leader stands and initiate a personal transformation to the next level always moving up the spiral as it is proven that leaders who operate based on a “Strategist” action logic are the most successful transformational leaders. Unfortunately in the research Rooke/Torbert did in 2005 there were only 4% of them. Knowing that progressively transforming organizations become most probably industry leaders this should be a concern. Interestingly Rooke/Torbert mention Scott McNealy, Sun's founder and former CEO, in their HBR article as belonging to the Expert type leaders which fits to my statement on the Sun culture that I made previously.
|
Theme |
Value |
Leader Type |
Leader Characteristics |
Leader Strengths |
|
TOURQUOISE = Holistic |
Sacrifice self interest to bigger whole |
Alchemist |
Generates social transformation. |
Leads society-wide transformation |
|
YELLOW = Systemic-Integrative |
Live one's potential, no harm to others |
Strategist |
Generates organizational & personal transformations. |
Transformational leader |
|
GREEN = Communitarian |
Belonging & Harmony, Consensus |
Individualist |
Interweaves competing personal and company action logic. |
Venture & consulting roles |
|
ORANGE = Achievist |
Competes for success |
Achiever |
Meets strategic goals. |
Manager, action & goal oriented |
|
BLUE = Purposeful-authoritarian, truth |
Believes in the right way |
Diplomat Expert |
Avoids conflict. Rules by logic & expertise. |
Supportive, bring people together. Individual contributor |
|
RED = Egocentric-exploitive, power |
Conquers and wins |
Opportunist |
Wins any way possible. |
emergencies & sales opportunities |
Posted at
07:31PM Oct 15, 2009
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Patterns in Company Culture
There is a really interesting approach to analyze, describe and finally transform company. For all the inspiration on this I have to thank Detego which is a Hamburg based change management consultancy. They adapted a consulting approach based on Beck/Cowan's Spiral Dynamics that they are using with clients.
In very simple words Spiral Dynamics describes the value systems of the different stages of human development from survival and kinship to integrative and holistic thinking patterns that have emerged and are still emerging nowadays. The spiral stands for the chronological evolution from survival up to holistic.
This concept can be a foundation for the transformation on an organizational level. With a specific survey the culture of a company can be measured and linked to the spiral themes. Most likely the outcome will be a mix of different systems on the spiral. The intention should be to move up the spiral to the so called second tier themes Systemic-Integrative and Holistic.
|
Theme |
Value |
Decision Making* |
Education* |
|
TOURQUOISE = Holistic |
Sacrifice self interest to bigger whole |
Blend natural flows, look up/downstream, plan for long range, life gets spoils |
Access to world, blend feelings & tech, bring past to life, maximize brain |
|
YELLOW = Systemic-Integrative |
Live one's potential, no harm to others |
Highly principled, knowledge centered, resolved paradoxes, competent gets spoils |
Becomes self-directed, whole-day package, tuned to interests |
|
GREEN = Communitarian |
Belonging & Harmony |
Reach consensus, all must collaborate, accept any input, communal get spoils |
To explore feelings, shared experiences, social development, learn cooperation |
|
ORANGE = Achievist, prosperity |
Competes for success |
Bottom-line results, test options for best, consult experts, successful win spoils |
Experiments to win, High tech – high status, how to win niches, mentors and guides |
|
BLUE = Purposeful-authoritarian, truth |
Believes in the right way |
Orders from authority, do right – obey rules, adhere to tradition, righteous earn spoils |
Truth from authority, traditional stair steps, moralistic lessons, punishment for errors |
|
RED = Egocentric-exploitive, power |
Conquers and wins |
Tough-one dictates, what gets respect, what feels good now, powerful grab spoils |
Rewards for learning, tough-love tactics, work on respect, controlled freedom |
*from Beck/Cowan, Spiral Dynamics 1996 and 2006, p.332
Let's take a moment and look at Sun's culture from this perspective. I believe we had a strong conviction and belief in our way of being open, doing open source, being an innovation leader, competing against the bigger players in the market, those who lock customers in, etc. (remember the fun that Scott used to make of certain of our competitors during his time as CEO) which is an aspect of BLUE (high sense of purpose, believing in the cause).
That element created a lot of common values, there was a strong element of “standing together”, a strong identification with the company and it's products, teaming up was valued a lot and then we were very consensus oriented which all could characterize the Sun culture having a strong GREEN (communitarian) element.
The Sun culture will soon be merged with the Oracle one. From a global perspective I am really curious to see more holistic patterns appear in our lives, using collective human intelligence to work on large scale problems without sacrificing individuality. I strongly believe that this is what our world needs and it is good to see it is emerging.
Posted at
09:19PM Oct 13, 2009
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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What companies can learn from Orchestras
Wow, this was really impressive! Just coming back from a presentation (no slides – just music!) with Christian Gansch a renown conductor, music producer, consultant and book author. In his books he points out what companies can learn from Orchestras. In his presentation he explained what a complex organization an orchestra is with a lot of departments and department managers. He gave insight in how it is managed by the conductor and how it is also managing itself.
To thrive for highest “customer satisfaction” all 120 pretty eccentric personalities of that orchestra need to stand and work together very closely and sensitively. This needs a lot of respect for one another, it needs tolerance to give in and acknowledge that for example if the Oboe realizes it cannot hold breath long enough when the violin plays a specific part that part needs to be played differently although it maybe more difficult for the violinists. After all listeners judge the whole sound of the orchestra and not just the Oboe.
The conductor also needs to value and respect each individual musician but also give each of them feed-back and not avoid conflict. In order to have a full harmony in the performance there might be conflict in the rehearsals (there are four of them in general and the last one traditionally is not interrupted by the conductor). On the other hand he needs to have a strong competence in perceiving the individual musicians to for example adapt some parts to a breath loosing singer who is not 100% on top that day. The latter reminded me of the leadership capabilities Scharmer is mentioning like listening, observing, sensing.
Overall this presentation was very inspiring, it came across with a lot of enthusiasm and passion. Here is an interview with Christian, unfortunately in German. Many thanks to HRD, Human Resources Development Consulting in Hamburg, who made this possible for their 20th anniversary!
Posted at
10:37PM Oct 08, 2009
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Community Equity
I wanted to make you aware of the Innovation Blog in which host Hal Stern interviews Peter Reiser on the concept of Community Equity. You can access the conversation at Blogtalkradio where you also find other interesting conversations on the social media topic or download the podcast via iTunes.
The basic idea of “Community Equity” is to measure contribution and participation of individuals in a community. I believe this is extremely HR relevant as from the Human Resources standpoint it can help putting the right people to the right projects or into the right jobs (skill management!), motivate people to get the best out of them, to collaborate and learn from the community and finally most importantly reward them! There is much more detail to this that Peter explains on his blog like the Tag Equity which shows the real value of a tag not just how much it has been used by relating all the different aspects of contribution to a specific tag.
I really think these features can help a lot building communities and systematically using knowledge and skills in an enterprise context. As there is a lot of mathematical algorithms and complexity to this it has been patented but is available opensource.
Very interesting will be how the usage of social equity can evolve by mashing it up with semantic web technologies. We would then talk about concept equity. Some of our guys are contributing to the EU KIWI project subtitled "Collaborative Knowledge Management, powered by the Semantic Web”.
As a side note Nielsen Norman Group published an interesting report on the usage of Social Software on Intranets in which Sun participated as one of 14 companies which were interviewed. You find a summary here.
Posted at
04:40PM Sep 29, 2009
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Leadership Institute
Already some time ago we finalized the Services Leadership Institute for EMEA. It was running over an entire fiscal year. Last July, together with the Business Sponsor of this Institute our Vice President for the Services Delivery organization who is one of my internal clients, we selected 15 Senior Managers who were regarded as potential successors of our current Directors. Our Directors had to present their candidates in individual interviews according to criteria we use to assess our leadership bench strength in each organization. For each criteria there had to be evidence from former achievements and behaviors the candidate had demonstrated in the past:
Performance Over Time
Business & People Results Delivery
Goals & Expectations
Developing Others
Values (Courage, Collaboration, Innovation, Integrity, Pace)
Future Potential
Learning Agility
Potential Next Moves
Career Aspiration
Ability of Development to Address Weaknesses
These two main elements would also be the X- and Y-axis in the 9 Box diagram we would do for the purpose of bench strength assessment in a Director's or Vice President's organization. There were also some more practical criteria like level of spoken English, accomplished the regular trainings from our Manager curriculum, etc.
The main idea to put an Institute in place was that we regularly did assess our talent and bench strength in the past, but we did not consciously build on the results to prepare people for the Director level. On the other hand we did not have lots of budget for this purpose. Therefor any action should be something that is done from the business for the business without involvement of too many external resources.
I was facilitating the design team and also parts of the face to face sessions, one Director from the business was working with us and playing the role of host in the sessions, facilitating the daily flow and additionally we had an external consultant supporting us with the design and acting as a coach for the participants.
The main element to enable the learning from this Institute were business projects. We selected 3 key business critical projects and for each of them a member of the leadership team as Sponsor who's responsibility was not only to drive the business result from the project but also to have participants focus on self learning, learning from each other, e.g. by creating an open feed-back culture. The learning strategy we developed was:
Me learning about me,
Sun/Me learning about Sun,
Sun learning about Me.
3 face to face sessions at different locations in Europe were the framework around the business projects to which we invited top executives for discussions and presentations. People were given the opportunity to get visibility, network and learn from our leaders.
In retrospective it was not easy to sell the concept of self learning. We learned that expectations for some were very much in the direction of having a high level university class with pitches from well known professors. Nevertheless I believe that most participants took away something for their personal development, some feed-back, some further clarity on the 360 degree feed-back that they brought to the Institute and for sure an extended network of collegues and Executives. A first step for them having reflected their behavior to maybe change some of that to become more rounded leaders.
State of Enterprise 2.0
Updating myself a bit on the Web/Enterprise 2.0 buzz over the past week. You only need to look for it and you find the numbers 2.0 everywhere. Still since I touched on this topic here the first time in November 2006 it did not loose but rather gain traction. The trend towards Enterprise 2.0 started beginning of 2006, 3 years from now. It is persistent and no one should have any doubt that the future is going in that direction. Although talking to people in some businesses it looks like the notion of Enterprise 2.0 is only rarely understood or known outside of software and tech companies.
The benefits are huge. Companies who are under pressure to innovate at ever accelerating rates do not have a choice. They need to rely on their employees' potentials and therefor encourage a bottoms up approach for idea generation. Simply networking with colleagues across the globe and structuring knowledge in Wikis leads to huge productivity gains. Additionally with deploying Web 2.0 software the companies' intranets can be made attractive again very easily at lower cost, also because employees themselves are maintaining it.
The entry barrier for companies to join probably is that Enterprise 2.0 is not only about deploying software, it requires a culture shift to an open company that empowers employees. Managers and Executives are responsible for creating the framework and then need to purely focus on leadership, motivation of self directed knowledge workers, nurturing communities, etc. Bertrand discusses the 6 guidelines for going Enterprise 2.0 by McKinsey on his blog.
Also the Hamburg public-private-partnership Hamburg@Work which supports the growth of new media, IT and communications technologies and companies in the city has put Enterprise 2.0 on the title of it's latest edition of “Always On”. Two companies in Hamburg are mentioned as having fully embraced the concept of Enterprise 2.0 and these are CoreMedia and Qype. CoreMedia even created their own in-house Twitter as we did in Sun. Although both are software companies there is the internationally operating Hamburg-based mail order group Otto which created internal forums and wikis as well as an external fashion blog.
Posted at
11:19PM Mar 17, 2009
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Leadership Training
Based on Scharmer's Theory U that I laid out previously there are interesting concepts of leadership trainings. The U process describes 7 leadership capabilities that help leaders or teams in complex situations to find decisions, ideas and solutions by letting go of the past to realize the future as it emerges and connect to the best future possibility.
At Daimler, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Fujitsu more than 150 leaders in each organization went through leadership programs designed by Scharmer based on the U approach. Within such a program at Daimler for example the newly promoted directors conduct interviews with key stakeholders and do job shadowing with some peers. In a 5-day U-based workshop they discuss the results of those activities in small groups, reflect the basic questions of authentic leadership in a room of intentional silence and find their own authentic communication style by practicing with professional theatre coaches and their colleagues to give feed-back. Directors who experienced this learning environment have reported personal behavioral changes (such as better listening skills and a greater capacity to deal with pressure) that have led to new leadership techniques, behaviors and results.
The U process works really well in an environment that is facing the challenge to provide constant innovation to be ahead of the market. A successful top executive at Nokia shared with Scharmer that her focus was on facilitating the opening process. Working with an engineering team in the automotive industry he used a development approach adapted to the U process. The team went through a learning journey (observing and opening), a retreat with intentional silence and an exercise of instantly building prototypes. As the topic was to develop an electronic self healing mechanism for the car engine aspects of an interview with practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine were integrated into the prototypes.
Theory U is also one basic element of leadership development and training for Wolfgang Bischoff and his Human Culture Academy. Together with Andy Logan he is offering a three day course for senior leaders “The Essence Workshop”. Details for the next course can be found
here. The venue is a really nice location at the Baltic sea East of Hamburg.
Posted at
03:53PM May 20, 2008
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Presencing
Some years ago I came across an interesting theory of a professor at MIT called Claus Otto Scharmer. Since I started this blog I always wanted to point it out. Now already one year passed since he published his book based on years of research including many interviews with leaders from all continents: Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges.
I have to admit that I am absolutely impressed by his forward thinking approach. Just the title “Leading from the Future as it Emerges” and the core element of his theory, Presencing: “Letting the inner knowing emerge” feels to me like a ground-breaking, eye-opening approach to start solving some of the worlds most prevalent problems by educating the leaders for the coming decades of this century in any organization or institution.
He writes in the executive review on the Theory U webpage that I will use here as I do not count on describing it any better in my own words (also the Graphic inserted is borrowed from there): “We are blind to the source dimension from which effective leadership and social action come into being. We know a great deal about what leaders do and how they do it. But we know very little about the inner place, the source from which they operate. And it is this source that “ Theory U” attempts to explore.”
In this article about Theory U that I invite you all to read he is referring to Albert Einstein who “famously noted that problems cannot be resolved by the same level of consciousness that created them.” And Scharmer continues: “If we address our 21st-century challenges with reactive mind-sets that mostly reflect the realities of the 19th and 20th centuries, we will increase frustration, cynicism, and anger.” To really address the systemic root issues of our problems he suggests a new Social Technology, consisting of seven essential leadership capacities: Holding the space of listening, Observing, Sensing, Presencing, Crystallizing, Prototyping, Performing which he lays out in any of the sources linked above. He starts very simply with listening and lists 4 levels of it: downloading, factual, empathic, generative... somewhere in his article there is a subtitle: “Slowing down to Understand” which best describes where most of us are at and where we should go...
I think this is enough to make you curious, there are more materials on the web at Ottoscharmer.com. There is also the Presencing Institute. I am always looking myself for ways to use any of the elements in my daily life and work. And I am coming back to a path that some may pursue after looking more deeply into Theory U, something I already mentioned while writing about Jim Collins' Level 5 Leadership and this is Meditation. A technique still regarded as strange by many in our western world but definitely used by some Asian leaders (although it is also practiced in Christian religions). We are at the essence here to solve some of the “Human Challenges” we are currently facing not only at a corporate level... This may lead us to connect more to our inner being and... no fundamental change without any fundamental transformation of Self!
Posted at
11:17PM May 08, 2008
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Pivotal Talent
I got some inspiration out of an HR meeting I have been in last week. We had an interesting discussion based on a concept from Boudreau/Ramstad about an effective talent strategy for the business. The authors get to the point how talent resources connect to strategic success. In consequence they describe how to identify a companies' “Pivotal Talent”. In order to do this it is crucial to know what are the key critical business processes that mostly contribute to the defined strategic success and then get clear about the people who are influencing these processes.
That way Federal Express in Asia identified couriers and dispatchers as being the pivotal talent. They needed to be knowledgeable about the logistics behind the scenes to give the customer the right answer if asked to wait another 15min because there are 10 more packages to come. Either they could do it knowing that the timing window at the airport hub is wide open or they would need to tell the customer that someone else will be picking up these additional ones.
The Disney example is also about increasing the customer experience and satisfaction as the main strategic goal. They identified the sweepers as most critical to help make people feel cared about waiting in the queues. They could for example get a new icecream for a child who just had it's fallen on the ground.
The pivotal talent may not always be the most obvious talent that we naturally tend to value. This shows that the concept of “Pivotal Talent” is even more important to apply!
Posted at
06:47PM Mar 20, 2008
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Brainstorming
Another really interesting learning I had over the past week was brainstorming with reverse assumptions. It may sound obvious or easy but a group doing it the first time needs a while to get into it. What would you say being part of a services group if you are NOT customer oriented? But exactly this provoking statement gets new ideas out of people. They start thinking about what this really means and things like bringing services proactively to the customer can arise – opening up to go beyond customer oriented!
Posted at
06:47PM Mar 20, 2008
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Alumni Networks
More reading on social networks brought me to the term Corporate Social Networking (CSN) and SelectMinds, Inc., a CSN solutions provider, apparently coining this term. The results of their first annual client benchmarking study done last year, which examined the financial contributions of CSN solutions to a cross section of its client base of 60 leading, global organizations revealed that a better connected workforce through CSN technology can yield significant financial contributions to organizations. Key benefits noted included productivity contributions, retention contributions, new business opportunities and leverage to re-hire former employees!
The latter is an interesting fact. Let us just collect some of the benefits of keeping former employees connected with the company. These relationships are a source of business and employee referrals including the possibility to re-hire them. Social Networking tools are ideal to build an alumni community and integrate it with regular employees. In that way their knowledge can be more easily accessed which could play a major role with retirees.
But the fact of having more direct access to this population with the intention to re-hire them seems to be the most attractive by far as rehires are quickly up to speed when they come back. They bring a huge motivation with them as they experienced that the grass is not greener elsewhere. They came back because they learned to value the company culture more. And in consequence they are more successful than the average employee, get promoted more quickly and make their ways through the organization. Not to mention the obvious: hiring cost for this population is much lower!
Another aspect where Social Networking can bring value is “Relational Onboarding”. The Human Capital Institute found that the quicker new hires establish relationships the more productive, the more satisfied and loyal to the organization they are!
The business network Xing had a conference on alumni networks already in 2006. More information can be found in the SelectMinds White Paper “Increasing the density of connections to power business performance” which can be requested on their webpage.
Posted at
07:22AM Jan 21, 2008
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Networks versus Matrix
Shortly after I put my last entry online I read another McKinsey article (Harnessing the power of informal employee networks) from November 2007 which even more explicitly positions the formal network as a new model against the matrix organization.
There were some interesting elements that were put forward contributing to the dysfunction of a matrix organization going back to history. Matrix organizations worked well until the late 1980s because they were used sparingly and did not greatly confuse the hierarchical lines responsible for the success of the companies. As the work environment became more complex with the demands of globalization more matrix roles were created as many different perspectives needed to be integrated.
This led to more interactions and decisions to be handled overwhelming the matrix manager. Also the amount of knowledge and information exceeded personal capacities of any individual. In order to work horizontally across an organization employees found themselves confronted with searching through poorly connected organizational silos for the knowledge and collaborators they needed.
McKinsey did a study which discovered how much information and knowledge flows through formal networks against how little through official hierarchical and matrix structures.
So very simply a formal network can be established by splitting up the matrix inherent dual line reporting to one solid line remaining and the more functional oriented line substituted by a formal network that through better knowledge flow and quick relationship building is for instance far better suited for best practice sharing.
A clear owner of such a network is needed and the scope of activities need to be defined to avoid network overlaps. Most interestingly the article talks about a “servant leader” in this role as this individual is not a boss but a facilitator of interactions between members, responsible for the infrastructure (which requires a budget!), training, incentives for participation and contribution. So enough possibilities to influence the performance of the network to be held accountable for it. Very clearly these networks need to exist outside the hierarchical decision-making processes within the company.
All the value can be accelerated by having many different networks exist in parallel. Then there would be an effect of cross fertilization through employees being part of multiple communities.
I believe success is dependent on the buy in of the senior management of a company as structures need to be provided meaning serious investment is needed and on the other hand on the “servant leader” who needs to be charismatic and experienced in motivating employees to collaborative behavior.
Value of Social Networks
Recently I put together a few slides about the benefits of social networks to update our team. As you know from some of my former entries I strongly believe that Human Resources professionals need to get on top of this trend as it is touching many different HR related topics: organization consulting, change management, communication, learning, team collaboration, compensation, retention, motivation, leadership requirements...
Here are the slides, let me briefly go through:
What is Web 2.0? - Starting off with a brief explanation: The phenomenon of Web 2.0 appears to me as two fold. On one hand all the people participating via blogs, videos, etc. contributing, sharing and voting. On the other hand new technologies that make it easier and more comfortable to find information and consume information. This reminds the Sun Microsystems vision statement on the next slide: “Everyone and Everything participating on the Network!”
Use of Social Networks – Coming to the core, describing purpose and resulting benefits of using social networks in a company.
Concept of Social Capital - How to explain that Social Networks are so beneficial? They add value because they increase the social capital of a company and more social capital increases productivity through higher levels of collaboration.
Communities of Practice - One type of Social Network that is in the focus for being used in a business context. It is a Social Network based on knowledge sharing and learning and has already been looked at before the social revolution with Web 2.0. Call it a classic.
Improving Organization Performance – Visualizing how Communities of Practice increase social capital and finally increase organization performance.
21. Century Organization - Taken from the McKinsey article I mention in one of my blogs putting into perspective nowadays work environment. McKinsey talks about establishing formal networks, meaning nothing else than specific accountable social networks or call them communities of practice that leverage out many of the disadvantages of today's prevailing matrix organizations and provide an ideal background for knowledge workers to give their best.
What is in it for HR? - Play a role in increasing the intangible company value that makes up more and more of the overall company market value, some say up to 80%! Provide mechanisms to motivate and retain the 21. Century workforce of predominantly self directed knowledge workers with innovative recognition models based on collaboration and participation goals that can be measured. And build appropriate leadership capabilities to motivate collaborative behavior!
For a practical example how to measure read Peter Reiser's blog about community equity showcasing one of our internal examples of a social network!
Posted at
09:38AM Jan 09, 2008
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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Leadership Styles Application
Let me come back to the Goleman Leadership Styles. How best use these styles to practically work with them helping a leader improve his leadership abilities? In an earlier blog entry describing our HR Organization I mentioned Sun's Organization Consulting group that built a simple tool based on Goleman's work that I want to share. Special thanks to Terry who designed it as part of an entire “Leadership Effectiveness Application Journal”!
The purpose of the tool is to identify a leader's strengths and improvement areas by assessing how he/she uses the variety of styles. So basically the coach starts to identify to what extent the leader uses each of the different styles referring to specific situations. All this will be listed in the table below. Then the actual situations would be compared to the situations you should use the style for and a gaps analysis is done that gives you the foundation for a development plan and discussion with the leader. I find this really compelling as it is so straightforward and easy to use!
Style | Points | Situations used | Appropriate Situations to Use | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Coercive | 3 | Under tight deadline | In a crisis, to kick-start a turnaround, with problem employees | High – personal stress causes use of Coercive Style |
Authoritative | | Never | When a clear / new direction is needed | High- this style was needed when integration of acquisition was done |
Affliative | | Never | To heal rifts in a team / to motivate people during stress | Low – team is generally not under stress nor does it exhibit rifts |
Democratic | 3 | To ensure high level of commitment | To build buy-in / get input from valuable employees | None - Low – seems to use this correctly |
Pacesetting | 4 | With new goals / programs | To get quick results from a highly competent team | Low – tends to get people quickly engaged in new programs or directed towards new goals |
Coaching | | Never | To help improve performance and develop strengths | Medium – some people seem to need coaching so this style would be helpful |
Total Points | 10 | | | |
Posted at
07:26AM Aug 10, 2007
by Volker Seubert in Human Resources |
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